Could government mandated "quality" programs be bad for your health.

Dr. Paul Hsieh explains how exactly that has happened in his recent commentary in Forbes.
He explains how the Hospital Readmission Reduction Program (HRRP) has backfired and likely caused harm. Another example is the "Never"programs in hospitals.

Certain mishaps including patient fall are deemed "never events" and hospitals are penalized for Medicare patient's falls. This apparently has lead to some hospitals and nurses taking various measures to keep patients in bed to prevent falls.Bed rest in the elderly can quickly lead to weakness and a greater tendency to fall.

This reminds one of the famous 4-hour pneumonia rule,which is a great real life example of  Goodhart's law , i.e. when a measure become a target it looses its value as a measure. The folks at CMS appeared to learn nothing from that debacle.

What may even be worse is that physicians may be intimidated by some thing called the disruptive physician concept into not saying the obvious and calling the emperor naked. I quote from an earlier blog entry:


"The mandatory and quasi mandatory nature of guidelines or quality indicators as wielded by the CMS mandarins and other institutional elites become even more dangerous with the spreading use of the "disruptive physician" doctrine. Not only must you go by the rules you can't complain about them without incurring the wrath of the hospital's disruptive physician committee.This doctrine is a brilliant control mechanism.If you challenge the disruptive physician concept you are by definition disruptive. "